The present invention pertains to digital data processing, and more particularly to high-speed scalar and vector unsigned binary division. The invention has application (by way of non-limiting example) in real-time software applications, scientific programming, sensor array processing, graphics and image processing, signal processing, and other highly compute-intensive and performance critical activities for a variety of applications.
Division, of course, is a fundamental operation on any computer, though design choices that are reasonable for general purpose division are unsuitable for highly compute-intensive applications, e.g., certain real-time software and/or scientific applications, sensor array processing, graphics and image processing, and signal processing. The processing needed for real-time manipulation and interpretation of medical imaging, by way of example, so overloads the computational capacity of conventional systems processors that required performance parameters sometimes cannot be met.
Vector processors are a class of computational devices that permit operations, such as multiplication and addition, to be simultaneously executed on multiple items of data. The complexity of division is such typical vector processors do not provide a divide operation. Rather, programmers are expected to include in their source code or libraries, algorithms that approximate division, e.g., by Newton-Raphson techniques or otherwise.
Though division can be accomplished at acceptable performance levels on both conventional (scaler) and vector processors, there remains a need for improved digital data processors methods and apparatus for scalar and vector binary division. Such is an object of this invention.
Another object of this invention is to provide methods and apparatus for binary division that operate on existing processors, and that can be ported to future architectures.
A related application is to provide such methods as can be readily implemented at low-cost and without consumption of undue processor or memory resources.